No-one answered Vilar’s pounding – he had to knock, since the doorbell was obviously not working. He pressed his ear to the door to see if he could hear anything, but, as far as it was possible to tell above the hubbub of the building, the apartment was silent. The door to the stairway opened and a moment later a woman emerged, panting, a large blue grocery bag in each hand, followed by two young children. Vilar waited until she had reached the landing and set down her burden in order to look for her keys in her handbag, before showing her his I.D., rattling off his name and rank.
“I’m looking for Céline Bosc.”
The woman barely looked at the warrant card and nodded, catching her breath. She was young, her curves squeezed into tight jeans, her large breasts bouncing beneath a low cut sleeveless T-shirt. The children, a very blond boy and girl of about the same age, were hungry, thirsty and hot. They were clamouring for something to drink; their mother told them to calm down, wait a minute, but they insisted in their shrill voices and started searching through the grocery bags for fruit juice. The woman decided to take care of them before answering Vilar’s questions and the policeman nodded, took one of the heavy bags for her and set it down inside the apartment. He waited at the door while the woman got her children something to drink. She spoke to them in a loud voice, probably to drown out their incessant chatter. Shouting at them to pipe down and watch television, she came back to Vilar, planting herself in the doorway.
“I’m sorry, but the kids are always on at me for something. So, anyway, Céline doesn’t live here anymore. Left about two months ago.”
“Do you know where I might find her?”
The woman cocked her ear to hear what the children were up to.
“The thing is, I don’t think she really wants to be found …”
“Why not? Did she leave without paying the rent?”
“Right, let’s say that … Listen, I have to get back to the children, so if you don’t have any other questions …”
She was about to close the door, but Vilar blocked it with his foot. On the doorbell he read the name Rayet.
“What is your first name, Madame Rayet?”
The woman looked surprised and let go of the door.
“What is it you wanted?”
“I want you to stop playing me for a fool and answer my questions. I am working on a criminal investigation and, if we are going to make this official, I should warn you that obstructing the police is a crime. There are other ways I could show you how serious this is, but I wouldn’t want to upset your children. It can’t be easy, being a single mother with two kids, so I don’t want to make things any harder. Besides, I’m in a hurry. So, your first name?”
The woman sighed and leaned against the frame of the door, her arms folded.
“Caroline.”
“Married?”
She gave a lopsided smile.
“I wish. No, I’m raising the twins by myself. What with Céline being on her own and having to fend for herself, we hit it off, if that’s what you want to know.”
“What I need to know is where she is now. You told me she didn’t want to be found. What did you mean by that?”
“It’s because of him. That bastard.”
“Which bastard?”
“Éric, her ex, he’s the father of her little girl.”
Vilar felt a burning sensation in the back of his neck that coursed through his nerve endings.
“Did you meet him? Did he come round often?”
“No, but the couple of times he did come were more than enough. The last time, he nearly killed her. In fact I called the police – well, I mean …”
“Did they show up? Did she press charges?”
“Sure, they came, but they got here too late as always … The ambulance took her to Casualty, she had a broken arm and two cracked ribs.”
“When was this?”
“Beginning of March.”
One of the children called out, whining that Mélissa had stolen his biscuit. There was shouting and the sound of banging on the walls. The woman turned away, craning her neck towards the far end of the apartment. She yelled at the children to settle down.
She sighed, shaking her head.
“Do you want to come in? That way I can keep an eye on them.”
Vilar closed the door behind him and followed her down the hallway to the kitchen, where the two children were drinking fizzy drinks and staring in open-mouthed stupefaction at a small T.V. Caroline Rayet turned back towards him.
“What is he like, physically?” Vilar said.
“Tall, dark hair, big hands … He has green eyes. He would have been pretty hot if it weren’t for …” She paused. “He’d come around sometimes and stay the night, but if he’d been drinking, or if he was on something, he’d get nasty. He still wanted to sleep with her, but she didn’t want him touching her. She used to say he was sick in the head. And it would always end in a fight. But Céline’s not like me, she’s short and skinny, so you can imagine …”
“Did he come back, after that time you called the police?”
“No. Wouldn’t have mattered if he had because she was so terrified that by two weeks later, she was gone. And anyway, she couldn’t afford the rent here anymore. She found a caravan for rent out in the sticks, in Beutre, on the rue de la Princesse – you couldn’t make it up! You can imagine what a dump the place was, especially with Alexia, but at least it wasn’t too cold that winter … I went to visit them once, and I tell you it depressed the hell out of me.”
“How old is the daughter?”
“Seven. She’s a lovely little girl. If it weren’t for her, I don’t know how Céline would cope.”
Vilar nodded. It was a story he had heard before. Nadia and Sandra and now Céline, all of these women could only survive because they had children with bright futures ahead of them, something they tried hard to believe in since, at thirty, they felt their own futures were nothing but a dark sink. Vilar desperately needed to get away from this misery memoir, and tried to think of some way to take his leave of this woman who would have happily poured out her whole life story now that someone was finally prepared to listen to what she had to say, even if it was only some detective who seemed panicked, his face pale and slick with sweat.
“I have to go,” he said almost curtly, as she launched into telling him about how tough life was, how it was no picnic.
She trailed off in mid-sentence and looked at him in surprise, then nodded her head.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I really need to find Céline. You understand …”
He felt as though he were fleeing. He felt as though these days he did only two things: hunt and flee, in his role as a staunch guardian of the laws of the jungle.
*
Twice before he had been to this part of Mérignac, away from the main road and the motorway. He needed a map to find the rue de la Princesse, which looked more like a country lane and ran through a no man’s land of woodland, fields overgrown with brambles and illicit rubbish dumps. There were a few houses, most guarded by fierce dogs, surrounded by ramshackle wooden outbuildings.
The caravan park was at the end of a tarmac drive lined with acacias. Under the trees, it was possible to imagine in the soft afternoon sunlight that this was a holiday camp. Vilar parked his car at the gate and walked in. Lined up along a central path were some fifteen caravans of various sizes and degrees of disrepair, ranging from large mobile homes to rusty tin cans. At the far end of the site was a brick building, which probably housed the showers and laundry facilities from which two women were exiting, carrying baskets piled high with washing. When they saw Vilar approaching, they stopped. He asked where he could find Céline Bosc and the younger woman, tall and slim with an angular face, wanted to know who was asking. Vilar flashed his warrant card.
“The blue and green striped awning over there,” she said pointing towards a long caravan whose roof was green with moss and lichen.
He walked away, feeling the worried glances of the two women boring into his neck. A little further on, three kids were laughing and swinging on a purple and pink porch. The children’s laughter sounded strange in the oppressive silence that reigned beneath the thick foliage of the oak trees.
Coming to the awning, Vilar wiped his feet on the tatty doormat that read HOME, SWEET HOME, then stepped onto linoleum with a pattern mimicking a wooden floor. Under the awning was a makeshift living room. A brown plush sofa stood next to the caravan underneath an open window, next to it was a camping table and three chairs. In one corner, a wicker chair with a couple of cushions sat facing a switched-off television. On the other side, a plywood dresser sat on a wooden pallet. He did not need to knock, because the door opened suddenly, and a woman appeared in a fog of cigarette smoke. She was wearing a navy blue Girondins de Bordeaux football shirt and a pair of cut-off jeans. Her dishevelled hair was dark with streaks of red, her puffy features made it look as though she had been drinking, or had just woken up. Or both.
“Céline Bosc.”
“Yes, that me. And who are you?”
Vilar introduced himself. No sooner had he mentioned Éric Sanz than Céline Bosc peered nervously out through the transparent plastic sides of the awning.
“Come in,” she said quickly. “We’ll be more comfortable inside, and anyway, it’s not so hot in there.”
Inside, he felt the floor tremble and perhaps bow slightly under his weight. The woman gestured to a bench draped with a dark red slipcover.
“Would you like something to drink? Beer? Mineral water?”
Vilar felt his mouth water. He accepted a beer. At the other end of the caravan, the banquettes had been pushed together to make a bed, covered by a duvet decorated with cartoon characters. On the shelf above were a dozen children’s books next to a pile of neatly folded clothes. A single glass and a plate sat on the draining board of the tiny stainless steel sink.
The woman sat down opposite him and with quick, precise movements opened two bottles. She handed Vilar a beer and took a long gulp of her mineral water. Then she lit a cigarette and offered one to the policeman, who declined.
“I’m looking for Éric Sanz, your ex. We need to—”
“How did you find me? Was it Caroline?”
“Yes. But don’t blame her, I leaned on her pretty hard.”
“Yeah, I bet …”
She smiled scornfully, pretending to study her bottle of water
“So what’s the dumb fuck done now?”
“He’s suspected of murder.”
With a sigh, she exhaled a cloud of smoke, stared out of the window and shook her head.
“It was waiting to happen. That’s what he was banged up for, or pretty close.”
“For grievous bodily harm.”
“Yeah, you could call it that. The girl he beat up is in a wheelchair now. Paralysed. I’d rather be dead, wouldn’t you?”
Vilar said nothing. He was studying Céline Bosc. She flicked the ash from her cigarette with such force it was as if she wanted to flick out the tobacco too, she rolled her shoulders like a boxer warming up. The exhaustion in her face was so striking that at first you did not notice her large grey eyes, her delicate features made sharper by an aquiline nose.
“That son of a bitch,” she said at last.
“Tell me about him. Tell me where we can find him so we can put an end to this.”
“Why? Are you going to shoot him? Because I’m telling you, that’s the only fucking way. Rid the world of that bastard. But no … You slap the handcuffs on him and he’ll be remanded until the trial and he’ll get, what? fifteen years max, right? And seven or eight years from now he’ll be out terrorising women and pimping whores to make money. You can take it from me, that’s what’ll happen.”
“Was he different when you met him?”
“He used to be the gentlest, most handsome man in the world. He was working as a barman in a club, where me and a gang of girls used to go for a laugh, for a break. We were twenty-five back then, working on the checkouts at Carrefour, so to let off steam – to forget the crappy job, the bosses, the long shifts – we would go down this club on a Saturday night and we weren’t scared of anything, maybe because we already knew we’d never get far in life. I don’t know … Anyway, he was working behind the bar and he had this amazing smile and we got talking. And that was that. For two years, he was fantastic. I knew he’d been inside, he insisted on telling me, wanted things to be clear. Some nights he didn’t come home and I suspected he was still in the life, but I ignored it because otherwise I was happy.”
The ghost of a smile flitted over her face and then her features hardened again.
“Alexia was born, and that’s when he changed. He never took to her. Once, when he was really pissed off, he told me she wasn’t his. But anyway …”
She fell silent, leaned back in the seat, her eyes down. From outside came the sound of children playing.
“She’s not here, your daughter?”
“I put her in the outdoor day-care centre. It’s not good for a kid, being shut up in a caravan. Just look around – I do my best to keep the place clean, but it’s like living in a shoebox. At least at the centre they look after her, she can have fun. When you’ve got a social worker, it’s pretty much free. And it saves on food. And it means when I’m at work I know where she is. One of my neighbours picks her up and looks after her till I get back.”
She stood up suddenly, grabbed her cigarettes and lit one.
“There is one place you might find Éric. At his foster parents’ place in Saint-Martin-du-Puy, over in Entre-deux-Mers. An aunt of mine lives nearby, she’s from Sauveterre, that’s how I remember. He put them through hell when he was a kid, but every time he goes home they take him in with open arms. The father worked in the post office, and she looks after kids placed with her by social services. That’s how they ended up looking after Éric until he was eighteen.
“What are their names?”
“He must have told me, but I can’t remember … Pralon? Something like that … Oh, I’ve got it: Pradeau. He even mentioned the mother’s name was Irène.”
A painful shudder ran through Vilar’s body.
“Has Éric got a brother?”
“Yes, but they fell out. Pradeau’s son, his biological son. I don’t remember his first name. Éric never talked about him. It was like he was ashamed. Like he was hiding something. And no-one was ever allowed to bring up the subject. It was taboo.”
Vilar stood up and immediately felt so faint he had to lean against a cupboard to stop himself from falling. The woman noticed his malaise, the hand bringing a cigarette to her lips froze in mid-air, but she said nothing. Vilar mumbled something like an apology or a farewell and rushed outside. He stared up at the leaves of the towering oak trees, peaceful, dappled, rustling gently, and headed back to his car, his mind blank, the heat clinging to his shoulders like an attacker weighing in him trying to wear him down.
He drove to Langon at an almost steady 150 k.p.h., sirens blaring. He had the front windows open and the noise left him dazed. He did not even try to think about Laurent Pradeau’s betrayal. He knew only that he had been betrayed, and that that was reason enough to floor the accelerator, drive to some tiny village of whose existence he had only just learned, turn up on the doorstep of these people and see what happened, improvise. He felt as though he were driving through a tunnel. Not a dark tunnel, one that was dazzling, blinding. A light had been turned on in his darkness and he could not bear it; nor could he work out anything other than that this journey was necessary.
He bought a local map at a petrol station and pored over it, smoking a cigarette from a pack he found in the glove compartment. With some difficulty he found the village, circled it in pen and set off again through this peaceful, verdant countryside with the almost childlike feeling – a mixture of excitement and anxiety – that he was advancing into enemy territory. He took two wrong turnings and had to negotiate paths that led into deep woodland. He drew up outside the little village, at the junction of two narrow roads, turning the car so it was facing back the way he had come. He continued on foot and spotted an old woman in a large straw hat sitting in a garden chair in the shade of a catalpa tree.
She started at the sound of his voice, roused from her doze, she narrowed her eyes and glared at him, her mouth a black hole of astonishment. He repeated his question; she appeared to give it some thought then raised her arms and hesitantly pointed to the right.
“Down that way, the last house, the one with the blue shutters and the car outside.”
He wished he could calm the confused hammering in his chest. He wished he did not feel so out of breath, wished that the heat would let up. He wondered whether he might not collapse, right here in the middle of the village street. He walked around the car, an old Renault estate whose right-hand doors were dented. The inside of the car was a jumble of boxes, empty water bottles and plastic bags. A duvet was spread across the huge boot. Someone had slept in this car. Éric Sanz had slept here. He lived in this car, forever moving about, travelling alone, impossible to pin down, the more so since his brother the policeman was keeping him up to speed about their investigations. And now he was in his parents’ house. Vilar kept walking, past the house and towards the fields and the vineyards which stretched as far as the line of tall, dark trees. As he walked he tried to decide on a plan of action, given that he was alone and unarmed. He thought about phoning Daras, imagined the melee, dozens of uniformed officers, Sanz being led away in handcuffs to the waiting police van, taking any information he had about Pablo to his cell. He saw himself standing in the confusion of a major police operation, watching the man being led away without a word – because guys like Éric, the ones who talk tough, who like to spew threats and insults, rapidly become silent as a tombstone as soon as they’re caught, somehow let fall scraps of information, just enough false leads to keep the investigating magistrate happy without ever giving up the truth. At any moment now, he might pile into his car and drive off and Vilar had no way of stopping him.
He turned back up the lane. He knocked on the door.
The man who opened looked at him wild-eyed, his jaw dropped, his chin quivered – it was so obvious he knew exactly who was standing on his doorstep that Vilar did not feel the need to flash his warrant card.
“My son has just left,” the man stammered.
He was tall and thin. His long neck was nothing more than a bundle of tendons in the midst of which his Adam’s apple bobbed like a ball in a fountain. His eyes, set into his tanned face, trapped in a web of wrinkles, were bright and piercing.
“Let me in,” Vilar said.
“Reinforcements will be getting here any moment now.”
Pradeau senior let his arms fall to his sides and led him down a long corridor adorned with small picture frames, but Vilar did not so much as glance at them. They went into the living room where a television was blaring.
Vilar saw the elderly woman sitting in an armchair, her head propped up on a large cushion as her husband moved over to take the remote control and turn down the sound. She gave a bad-tempered scowl and then stared blackly at the policeman.
“May I present Irène, my wife. She’s been ill for five years. She’s always complaining she can’t hear the television, so she steals the remote and turns up the sound. She can’t manage to wash herself any more, but she can still steal the remote … The doctors are mystified. This gentleman wants to speak to Éric!”
He shouted and Vilar realised the message was intended not only for the old woman. He listened carefully. The rest of the house was silent.
“Give him the bread money,” the old woman said, “I put it on the shelf in the kitchen. I thought the loaf he brought on Tuesday was overbaked. The boys don’t like it like that, I don’t know how many times I’ve told him.”
She nodded and turned back to the television, picked up the remote control and turned the sound up again, but even so Vilar heard a faint creak outside the living room. He dashed out of the room, but did not even have time to turn before he felt a tremendous blow, someone slamming him against a chest of drawers. He felt himself being lifted up and thrown to the ground. His head banged against the skirting board, pain shot through his body and his stomach heaved as someone kicked him.
“What on earth is going on?” the old woman screeched.
Vilar vomited up a little bile, forcing himself to breathe because he could feel himself slipping into a bleary darkness. He inhaled almost with a roar, felt a hand grab his throat and heard a shriek echo through the house, dimly aware that the shrill, cracked voice was screaming: “Help, son! Help!”
Then a face pressed itself against his and he saw the green eyes staring into his, the hesitation in the stare, the uncertainty that flickered across the face each time the scream started up again. And the mixture of hatred and moronic brainlessness. His breath smelled of menthol. The guy was chewing gum. Vilar focused on this because he could focus on nothing else.
“So you managed to track me down … a nice piece of police work. I heard you were good, but even so, I have to fucking hand it to you. I’m not going to kill you. Not here. Not in front of them. You already scared my mother and I should rip you apart just for that, you fucker. Not here, but soon, I’ll tell you where to meet me and then we’ll see. And anyway, you’re not done yet. What’s his name again? Oh, yeah, Pablo! Think about him. I’ll be in touch soon.”
Sanz slammed Vilar’s head against the floor and Vilar saw him clamber over him, but did not hear the door bang or the car drive off. He lay there, barely conscious until the old man pressed some ice against his forehead. When he came round, he had no idea how long he had been unconscious. He struggled to sit up, leaning back against the wall and pressed the bag of ice to his head. The old man said nothing. He came and went between the hall and the living room, fussing anxiously around Vilar, shuffling about in his slippered feet. He brought a glass of water which Vilar drained. The old woman sat in her armchair moaning over and over, “Oh God, oh God.”
Vilar slowly tried to get to his feet and was surprised to see blood on the tiles. He wondered where he was bleeding from, his fingers felt a wetness at the back of his head and another wound above his cheekbone, blood trickled from his chin down his shirt and onto the floor.
“I’m getting blood everywhere,” he said to the man who reappeared with a sponge, and knelt down to clean him up.
The man got to his feet again and disappeared into the kitchen. Vilar followed him, in spite of his headache and the dizziness that almost did for him again. He tore off a sheet of kitchen roll and pressed it to his cheek, then dropped the bag of ice into the sink.
“Monsieur Pradeau, I need to call Laurent.”
Pradeau looked at Vilar sadly.
“What difference will it make? Just look at this mess … this catastrophe. My sons.”
“I knew nothing about it. Laurent told me that his mother was ill, he told me sometimes he couldn’t bring himself to come and see you.”
“I know. He doesn’t visit much anymore. It hardly matters, she hasn’t recognised him for the past couple of years … And, well, he and I have never known how to communicate … It’s been a month since I’ve seen him. No news. Not even a phone call. I called his mobile the other day, but there was no answer. I don’t know. But Éric, he visits all the time. He’s the only person she still recognises. It’s very strange. She didn’t give birth to him, he didn’t come to us until he was four, but every time he comes, she gets out of her chair and takes a few steps so she can hug him. And every time he leaves, she cries. Five minutes later she’s forgotten he was here, but every time it breaks her heart to see him go.”
He pulled out a chair from the kitchen table and sat down heavily. His pale eyes bored into Vilar as he asked why he had come.
“I came to arrest your son Éric.”
“What did he do?”
The old man clung to the table with both hands, leaning forward waiting for Vilar’s answer.
“We believe he killed a woman.”
Pradeau closed his eyes. His knuckles were white from gripping the sides of the table so hard. “It’s not true,” he murmured. He shook his head slowly then opened his eyes again and looked at Vilar through tears that welled in his eyes but did not flow.
“I’m listening,” he said in a whisper.
“It took us three months to trace it to him, to here. I also came because I wanted to find out why Laurent lied to me for so long, and why he disappeared a week ago. There are other things I’d like to know too, but there’s no guarantee I ever will.”
Vilar sat down because the room was spinning.
The old man took a pack of tissues from his pocket, wiped his eyes and sniffled. He was struggling to breathe. His voice quavered a little.
“They really were brothers, you know. They really loved each other. Laurent used to protect Éric, he stood up for him at school when the other kids bullied him, and Éric would barely talk. Years it went on, until he was in the sixième he hardly said a word, the only person he’d talk to was his big brother … He was very affectionate with us, he’d come and snuggle up to us on the sofa. He was like that for a long time. And then when he started getting into trouble in his teens, Laurent covered for him, as they say … He lied for him. I’m sure he was even in on some of his brother’s pranks. But there was nothing anyone could do. Not us, and not Laurent. It was as if there was something broken inside him before he ever came to us. As soon as he turned eighteen he moved out, we weren’t able to stop him. He promised he’d come and visit … It was three years before we had any news from him … Laurent was studying for his law degree at the time. He’d already decided he wanted to join the police, it was all he ever talked about.”
“And did they see each other? I mean other than here?”
“I think so. It’s something I only realised a few weeks ago. Laurent knew about one of his mother’s funny turns, even though I’d never mentioned it to him. But Éric was here the day it happened. That’s how I knew that there was something – that they were in touch with each other. When Éric was sent to prison, Laurent said he never wanted to hear his name again. All the time he was inside, he would tell us to shut up if we so much as referred to his brother, and it broke my wife’s heart. Éric being in prison and our sons not speaking to each other …”
“Did you know that Éric had a daughter, that he had lived with a woman for two years?”
“Yes … He mentioned it. But he said it was his life and none of our business. So we had no choice but to accept it.”
Pradeau got up and went and looked in the living room.
“How is she? All this has shaken her up.”
The man shrugged and sat down again.
“She’s asleep. I gave her a tablet. One of the advantages of the disease is that you tend to forget your troubles. I doubt she’ll remember anything about what happened. Or maybe she’ll have a nightmare or an anxiety attack, but she gets those all the time over such trivial things, or sometimes when she realises that she’s slipping away … I don’t know how it’s possible, those moments of lucidity. Sometimes, she’ll look at me, she’ll take my hand and squeeze it hard enough to break a bone and she’ll say ‘What’s wrong with me? What’s happening to me?’ And it’s like seeing her sink into quicksand. I don’t know how to explain it. She’s so far away and at the same time she’s so close. She’s alive and she’s already dead … She’s still here and yet all I have of the real her are memories.”
He trailed off, out of breath.
“They all leave and there’s nothing I can do to keep them here. Even her … It’s like when you catch someone’s hand as they’re falling and you feel it slipping and there’s nothing you can do, you know?”
“But you can still touch her, still talk to her …”
The old man shook his head angrily.
“You can’t possibly understand. She’s not the woman she used to be, she doesn’t even remember who she used to be. I don’t know how to explain … You don’t touch someone, don’t kiss someone just for your own pleasure … It doesn’t work like that. And she doesn’t react, doesn’t react at all. Sometimes she gets frightened when I get too close to her and she screams. And sometimes I’ll hold her in my arms like a big doll. There are times I’d rather be alone than have to live with someone who exists only because she has still has
“vital signs”, as the doctor puts it. Sometimes, when I have to change her or wash her, I get these terrible thoughts. I shouldn’t really tell you that, you being police and all. I’ve never even told my son. He pretends he doesn’t understand. That way he doesn’t have to deal with it.”
Vilar tried to summon an image of Laurent Pradeau from the description his father gave. He found it difficult to reconcile it with the man he thought he knew. He gulped air like an exhausted swimmer forcing himself to stay on the surface.
“What’s going to happen now?” the old man said.
“We’ll put your house under surveillance, put a tap on your phone in case Éric gets in touch. That’s all. One way or the other he’ll be arrested. He’s been playing a game and he’s bound to lose in the end. I’ll need a photograph of him, the most recent one you have. We’ve probably got a mugshot, but you know what they’re like, your own children wouldn’t recognise you in one.”
Vilar made no mention of Laurent because he did not know what would happen, and he did not want to overwhelm the old man slumped in the chair. He got to his feet and realised he no longer felt dizzy and his legs seemed able to support his weight.
“Will everything be alright?” Pradeau said.
Vilar nodded.
“Could I have the photo please?”
He heard the man open a drawer in the dining room and rummage around. Finally he came back and handed Vilar a photograph.
“That one was taken three years ago.”
“It’ll be fine.”
Vilar walked to the front door. As he passed the living room, he glanced in at the old woman sleeping, her head resting against the back of the chair, her mouth open. He turned to the old man.
“Don’t worry. Well, what I mean is … Just take good care of her, Monsieur Pradeau.”
He went back to Bordeaux the way he had come, dazed by the speed, the noise and a headache. Driving through the city centre, he found it difficult to convince himself these places were familiar, that he had spent years patrolling these streets. He felt almost as if he were a stranger, a traveller who had returned after a long voyage. Out of sheer reflex, he saluted the security guard as he turned into the police station car park and, when he got out of the car, he was startled by the sound of voices, car doors slamming, tyres squealing as a squad responded to a call.
People stared at his bloodstained shirt, his swollen face. He smiled at them to throw them off the scent, told them it was nothing. He asked after Daras and was told that she had been looking for him.
She was in her office.
“Close the door,” she said as soon as he appeared.
He sat facing her and she stared at him, pretending not to notice the gashes and the lumps on his face that had now turned black or blue.
“I’m not going to ask you what happened,” she said. “I’d rather believe you walked into a door, because you’ve been pretty distracted recently. So much so that I’ve got someone in the cells, a certain Thierry Lataste, without mentioning any names, and I have no idea what he’s doing there – is he under arrest? Is he being deported? Or is he just here to see how comfortable our cells are? And where are the notes of the interview? You go to this guy’s office, you arrest him, you drag him here single-handed, you interrogate him, you toss him in a cell, you request an arrest warrant for someone named Éric Sanz, all this without consulting with anyone? Who do you think you are? Dirty Harry? What sort of shit is this? I’ve got the juge d’instruction screaming down the phone at me because some lawyer is accusing us of arbitrary arrest and detention, I’ve got Garnaud busting my balls wanting to know where my officers are, one of whom disappeared a week ago and the other isn’t answering his phone … I mean, fucking hell! Right now, you’re going to go home and wait there until we’ve dealt with you. That’s all. You get out of here, get yourself stitched up and you don’t go around playing cops and robbers until I say you can, got it?”
Vilar stared at her. His cheeks were flushed with anger and it gave him a healthy glow. “You want me out of here right now, or do you want to know what happened? Might help you do your job.”
“Go on, then, spill … Jesus, you haven’t got a fag, have you?”
He found a crumpled pack in his pocket and tossed them onto the desk.
“You’re lucky I didn’t bleed all over them.”
“Yeah, yeah, you’ll have me in tears in a minute … Right, so what have you got to tell me?”
She smoked with obvious relish, inhaling deeply and blowing clouds of smoke above her head. Perhaps she was also trying to calm herself.
Breathlessly, he told her about what had happened and what he had found out. Daras, not knowing where to stub out her cigarette, ground it under her shoe so as not to interrupt Vilar as he talked on and on, eyes fixed on her though probably without seeing her; she did not want to break the fragile silence that swooped down on every sentence as though to pin it to the ground, to stop it having its effect or even being heard. When he had finished, she said nothing, she did not move, she stared at the map of the city on the wall as though searching through that maze for some way out. After a moment, she sat back in her chair and spoke quietly.
“What I don’t understand, what I can’t even imagine, is where Laurent is now and what the fuck he’s up to. I just hope …”
“I’ve thought about that too. But if he has, we’ll never find the body. It would be just like him to disappear without a trace, to piss everybody off even when he’s dead.”
“Jesus, for months he’s been keeping his brother up to date about our every move, all that so you couldn’t arrest him? There we were wondering how his aim was so bad that night he shot at the guy who attacked you in the playground. He didn’t even manage to put him out of action, remember? We were thinking of clubbing together to send him on a training course. We didn’t realise that actually, his aim had to be perfect to graze him in precisely the right place so you could testify that he’d been hit.”
“To say nothing of making Morvan disappear. You always knew it must have taken two men to do it, and the crime scene, not a hair, not a fibre – same thing in Nadia’s studio.”
Daras got up and leaned on the desk next to Vilar.
“How could he? Morvan was tortured. I just can’t imagine Laurent doing something like that, it’s out of the question. And all those calls winding you up about Pablo? Shit, you guys were friends, Laurent knew the kid.”
“I know. Maybe things got out of control.”
“But why, for fuck’s sake? Why take all these risks, why attack you, his friend, and why bring your son into it? How can someone change so much, so quickly? There’s something between those two bastards that goes way beyond the fact they’re brothers. There’s something else. We’ll have to go through everything. Go back over their lives, now we know there’s a connection. There’s a skeleton buried somewhere.”
“There was some officer who used hang around the high-class orgies organised by those big shots – Sandra de Melo mentioned it. I’m not sure exactly what his role in the whole thing was, it was Sanz who did the pimping. But I’m sure the officer was Pradeau.”
“What the hell would he be doing there? Looking out for his little brother? Stopping him doing something stupid?”
“I could imagine a little erotic game going wrong, things getting a little extreme, a girl dying.”
“It’s pointless to speculate, that won’t get us anywhere. There’s always rumours and people shit-stirring. Besides, when did they take place, these orgies? We’d have to go back over the files of every missing girl, every unsolved murder … It would be a nightmare. And besides, there are plenty of other psychos out there – right now, we’ve got a guy running loose in the city murdering girls. He’s decapitated two, and there’s a third case we can probably pin on him … Are you really suggesting – with no proof, trusting to a hunch – that we start reopening cold cases and combing through missing persons files going back years? Besides, like I said, I can’t imagine Laurent as some psycho.”
Vilar said nothing. He was trying to take in was she had just said, trying to gauge the scale of the investigation it would represent. He knew the past was never dead. That it dies only with memory.
“Yes, I can see him being involved. Now I can.”
He tried to sit up in his chair, but felt a terrible shooting pain in his side. He pulled a face, struggled to catch his breath.
“Don’t you think you should get yourself looked at?” she said, concerned. “Do you want me to take you to Casualty? That bastard’s broken at least one of your ribs.”
Vilar waved away the offer and got to his feet. His whole body ached and he stood motionless for a moment, waiting for the pain to subside. Daras rummaged in a desk drawer and took out a blister pack of tablets. She went to fetch a glass of water.
“Here, take two of them. That way you’ll be able to stand up.”
He swallowed the pills and drank some more water. He felt as though he could drink litres of the stuff.
“Go home, get some rest, sleep if you can, I’ll call you as soon as I’ve got anything. You’re no good to anyone in that condition. You’ve done enough for today, don’t you think? For three months we’ve been floundering and now we know the guy’s name, we know his haunts … that’s not bad, is it? I’m going to go organise surveillance units to keep an eye on the parents’ place and the caravan, even though I don’t think either will do any good. If he takes his brother’s advice, he’s not going to fall into that sort of trap. But it may be our only hope.’
Vilar went home, took a shower, cautiously soaping his aching body. The pills Daras had given him made it possible for him to move, to breathe without too much difficulty, but his skin burned beneath his fingers, like a touchscreen, sensitive to the slightest movement. He tried to remember where Sanz had hit him, wondering how he could have landed so many blows in such a short space of time. Or had he gone on beating him after he passed out?
He examined the wound on his head: a two-centimetre gash which did not look particularly deep, and a large swelling. He dabbed it with Betadine, found some antiseptic powder in the bathroom cupboard and shook some over the inflamed area. Then he rubbed his bruises with an ointment that smelled of mint and camphor and remembered that Pablo, when he had to have ointment applied, loved to bring the tube to his nose, close his eyes and smell it.
He had just managed to dress himself when the telephone rang. Of course, his heart stopped and for a moment it seemed as though it might not start up again. Of course, he made for the telephone as though nothing else existed, as though he were walking through pitch darkness along a girder suspended high in the sky.
It was Daras.
“The hospital just called. Sandra de Melo died an hour ago.”
The girder swayed on its cable. Vilar had to dig deep into his chest to find the breath he lacked.
“And the kid?”
His voice was hoarse. He cleared his throat.
“What?”
“Her son, José. The little autistic boy. He was admitted to a psychiatric unit the night it happened and now … Well, it’s no place for a kid.”
He hung up without another word. He took the photograph of Éric Sanz from his pocket and studied it, hoping for some magic revelation, some vision of the man at the wheel of a car and of where he might be right now, but all he saw was the thin face, the grey eyes smiling into the lens, looking gentle and shy, standing in front of Arcachon Bay at low tide, and here and there on the sand, glistening in the sunshine, boats large and small lying on their sides.